Playing Games Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The moon has bounced
its floating cream
balls into my light-swelled couch,
stretching out its borders

into a cotton luna moth
with no eyespots,
its hindwing tails clipped.

It floats its body across
the rays-engulfed room,
as its forewings narrow

into an oval paper plate
like the one from which
I ate my late pizza

bathing in a pool of light
it had showered
into the rimless tray of my table.

(ii)

Through the trees
flapping their branches

in punchy gusts
of wind
by the sighing gaping window,
the moon falls

on the drifting center table,
a large feather blown off
from a fleeing white egret,

as it spreads its body
into a thin roundish patch
drifting steadily until
pasted on the wall.

as I stay up late at night
scribbling and erasing
snaky lines which whisper

and hiss at me
like tongue-prodding venomous
snakes deprived of dinner.

The world in squiggles
across the sky,
a stretched-out massive paper
dotted with lime marks

scribbles off more sprinkled
and blinking
stars floating like strayed
buzzing bees and fleeing moths.

(iii)

The night bleaches
into a creamier and silver space,

from which the moon
bounces again
on my center table, ball rolled off
the wall hollowing out
into a lake's shore.

I rush out through
a side door to see the moon
roll off the hillside's
foot kicking off ripples back
to the lake's chrome-coated center.

I see the moon sink
into its deep grave inside a lake,
only bouncing off

a long-necked bird,
the floating swan
that swallows all rays

from a bleached sky
grown soot to cut off games
from sticky itchy eyes.
(i)

The moon has bounced
its floating cream
balls into my light-swelled couch,
stretching out its borders

into a cotton luna moth
with no eye-spots,
its hindwing tails clipped.

It floats its body across
the rays-engulfed room,
as its forewings narrow

into an oval paper plate
like the one from which
I ate my late pizza

bathing in a pool of light
it had showered
into the rimless tray of my table.

(ii)

Through the trees
flapping their branches

in punchy gusts
of wind
by the sighing gaping window,
the moon falls

on the drifting center table,
a large feather blown off
from a fleeing white egret,

as it spreads its body
into a thin roundish patch
drifting steadily until
pasted on the wall.

as I stay up late at night
scribbling and erasing
snaky lines which whisper

and hiss at me
like tongue-prodding venomous
snakes deprived of dinner.

The world in squiggles
across the sky,
a stretched-out massive paper
dotted with lime marks

scribbles off more sprinkled
and blinking
stars floating like strayed
buzzing bees and fleeing moths.

(iii)

The night bleaches
into a creamier and silver space,

from which the moon
bounces again
on my center table, ball rolled off
the wall hollowing out
into a lake's shore.

I rush out through
a side door to see the moon
roll off the hillside's
foot kicking off ripples back
to the lake's chrome-coated center.

I see the moon sink
into its deep grave inside a lake,
only bouncing off

a long-necked bird,
the floating swan
that swallows all rays

from a bleached sky
grown soot to cut off games
from sticky itchy eyes.